Operation and maintenance

Ontario Power Generation and over 30 partner organisations have completed Exercise Unified Control, a two-day, large-scale emergency preparedness exercise at the Pickering nuclear power plant. The exercise is part of the lead-up to the relicensing of the plant in 2018.

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute has restarted the 30 MWt High-flux Advanced Neutron Application Reactor (Hanaro), which has been offline for the past three-and-a-half years. During this period, the reactor has undergone safety upgrades.

L3 MAPPS has been contracted by EDF Energy Nuclear Generation to supply two classroom simulators to its Nuclear Power Academy in the UK. The project is under way and the two simulators will be put into service in the first quarter of 2018, the Montreal, Canada-headquartered company said yesterday.

A Japanese high court has today overruled a lower court decision that allowed Shikoku Electric Power Company to continue operating unit 3 of its Ikata nuclear power plant in Ehime Prefecture. Ikata 3 is one of five units that have so far restarted since Japan took all its operable reactors offline for safety checks following the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

The process of loading the 163 fuel assemblies into the core of unit 1 of the Leningrad Phase II nuclear power plant in western Russia began on 8 December, state nuclear corporation Rosatom announced. The VVER-1200 unit is scheduled to start up next year.

The governor of Japan's Fukui Prefecture has today approved the restart of units 3 and 4 of Kansai Electric Power Company's Ohi nuclear power plant. The utility reportedly plans to restart both units by mid-March.